CRUISE LINE LOSES GARBAGE GAMBLE

In the long-running television series The Love Boat, the cruise ship that was the venue for weekly romance on the high seas featured a quirky cast of characters.

The regular ensemble consisted of the captain, purser, doctor, chief steward, social director and bartender. Somehow, the sitcom's writers neglected to include one crewman who would have given the show even more authenticity.

It took a passenger with a video camera to introduce the "designated dumper" to the world. In 1991, the tourist captured a member of the Regal Princess' crew tossing more than 20 plastic bags of waste into the Atlantic Ocean five miles off Duck Key.

The telltale tape became key evidence in the federal prosecution of Los Angeles-based Princess Cruises Inc., inspiration for The Love Boat series. Last week, Princess agreed to pay a $500,000 fine in the first case brought under a 1987 anti-pollution law.

Would-be polluters should now be on notice that not all cruise passengers are merely looking for love. A few are passionate about the environment, too.

OYSTER INFORMATION CAN BE CRUCIAL

If anything disproves the old "what you don't know can't hurt you" theory, it's the nine deaths that were caused in Florida last year by the unwary consumption of raw or partly cooked oysters infected with the Vibrio vulnificus bacterium.

The bacteria pose little threat to people with normally functioning livers, but they can be fatal for those with liver disease, stomach ailments or weakened immune systems. Sadly, not enough people know that and nine died for lack of the knowledge.

That's why Gov. Lawton Chiles and his Cabinet are to be applauded for adopting a rule that requires wholesale seafood sellers to warn customers that raw oysters can be dangerous. And it's also why every restaurant in the state should join the Florida Restaurant Association in an educational blitz with the voluntary -- and prominant -- posting of similar warnings on their own premises.

To most of their customers, it won't make a speck of difference. To a very few, it will make a heck of a big one.

SAD STATE OF AFFAIRS AT SADD

Students Against Driving Drunk is on the skids in more ways than one as, yet again, wretched excess takes its toll.

It's bad enough that SADD is reporting operating losses of $700,000-plus in the past two years. It's even worse that the 11-year-old organization blew $1.4 million on a "retirement and consulting package" for Robert Anastas, its founder and chief executive. But to address the mess by accepting contributions from the alcohol industry? That's not only sad, it's mad.

And the worst part about SADD's self-inflicted wound is that all non-profit organizations will pay the price as an increasingly skeptical public -- stung most recently by revelations about the high life enjoyed by the national United Way's former executive -- decides that charity not only begins at home but stays at home.

Money that stays at home may not support good causes, reasons the frugal and hard-working skeptic, but it won't be blown on the opulent lifestyle of a tinpot administrator, either. And who can fault the frugal and hard-working skeptic for that?